Knowledge Signalling and Virtue Signalling

While I have my own opinion on this issue, I keep it to myself because I’m not in charge. What I have been insisting in every one of the relevant fora in which I participate, at every opportunity, is that both sides of the argument must do the decent thing and admit that there is a serious price that their position will incur, if adopted. To my consistent dismay and frustration, no one agrees to do this simple, responsible, moral, and adult act. It’s a nightmare straight out of Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind.

Anyway, this Israeli intellectual told me that I was absolutely wrong to formulate the question as I did, because it is not a sure thing that Israelis will die if Hamas stays in power, while the hostages will definitely be killed if we don’t accept Hamas’ terms. Indeed, she added, it’s surprising that I, an Historian of Jewish Law, am apparently unaware that her position is a direct upshot of the Talmudic dictum, bari ve-shema, bari adif, viz. A sure thing always beats out a possibility.

I replied that even by her lights, the rule is inapt. The sure thing isn’t so sure, because it’s in Hamas’ interests to hold onto hostages, as they provide the only real leverage they have. At the same time, judging by the number of Israelis murdered by released prisoners (including Yihya Sinwar), the possibility could well be a sure thing. (I wasn’t going to mention that the accepted Talmudic ruling is that a sure thing doesn’t always beat out a possibility.)

The exchange made me think about the appropriateness of using precedents as rhetorical devices (and to wave one’s, usually limited, expertise as a form of knowledge signaling).

Consider two of the more recent examples that have been bruited about in the mediasphere.

As proof that Israel should surrender to Hamas, because defeating it is a ‘lost cause,’ a lot of people have been invoking the exchange between Jeremiah and Hananya b. Azur (Jeremiah 28). Jeremiah preached surrender to Babylonia and Hananya, a false prophet, predicted victory. The point of invoking this exchange is that Israel is intoxicated with winning a hopeless war, driven forward by false prophets like Smotrich and Ben Gvir.

Really? That’s an apt analogy?

Think about it. By invoking this example, and applying it to our present circumstances, these people are effectively saying that Israel is a sinful, corrupt country that God has decided to destroy (which was Jeremiah’s central). Moreover, if Hamas is like Babylonia, than Sinwar’s hordes are the chosen agent of God’s Wrath against His wayward people. Is that their point? The horrors of October 7th were God’s Will? If yes, say so and see the reaction you’ll receive. If not, don’t get so high and mighty with half baked comparisons.

Something similar may be said about the recent fashion of invoking statements by Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik זצ”ל and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein זצ”ל. After Sabra and Shatila, Rav Soloveitchik famously demanded that Israel take responsibility for facilitating the massacre of Palestinians by Christian Phalangists, on the grounds that Israel must abide by a high moral standard. Rav Lichtenstein, it is reported, decried those who sought a technical textual to absolve Jews of full responsibility for the lives of non-Jews. He properly took to task anyone who impugned the dignity and right to life of all people. These examples, we are told, require Israel to go above and beyond to supply aid to Gaza.

Once again, neither fits. Neither of these Colossi of Torah was referring to situations in wartime, or to the kind of unprecedented circumstances faced by our soldiers, where the population is thoroughly infiltrated by an armed enemy and vast swaths of that population actively support that enemy. Would they have supported aid to innocents? I’m sure they would. Would they have been categorical in the present circumstances? No one knows, and the Torah categorically prohibits necromancy. So, please, if you want to say something, it’s your absolute right. You want to cite precedent, have some integrity and check that it fits the circumstance. Anything less is demagogy.